Mombasa Road Retravelled

by KJ Griffin

  Chapter 18

  The sun's rich red orb rises from the Indian Ocean, suffusing the cusp of the water with a shower of golden tentacles that swat us in the face as we cross the Nyali Bridge. There's no headwind and it's already hot and cloudless at the day's break, but despite the damp feel of our leathers clinging to sweaty backs and necks, the serenity of the near-empty early morning road fills us with a feel-good frisson.

  Of course, I've found reserves of strength from somewhere I didn't know I kept them and have insisted upon riding as I always have done with full panniers and rucksack, not to mention Little Stevie on the saddle behind. This is a valedictory trip and it's going to be done in due style, whatever the cost.

  But as we bump over the vertiginous corrugations that have been stamped into the softening tarmac by the passage of a never-ending convoy of illegally overweight lorries, we leave Mombasa Island behind and a sadness seeps out of the palm trees that fringe the decrepit dual carriageway to hang heavy on my heart: Goodbye, Mombasa! You harbour so many good memories, which stretch right back to the bad old days when I was on the rampage, long, long ago. But this is the last we shall ever see of each other. And that's suddenly hard to take.

  My eyes start to moisten at this morbid realization, and a film of steam spreads subversively to smear the inside of my goggles, ruining the bittersweet self-indulgence of the moment. Only one thing for it: I open up the throttle and we shoot ahead of Kiwi John's battered brown Land Cruiser, flying up the succession of deeply-rutted bends that haul the up-country-bound traveller through the first significant climb from sea level. The Africa Twin responds superbly, its effortless torque catapulting us past lorries, Combi vans and saloon cars in a snarl of engine power. Little Stevie loves all this, as he indicates with a steady tap on my left shoulder.

  Most of the traffic from the small satellite towns that line this section of the highway is heading the other way, but I'm hardly letting up speed for anything, neither chickens, nor speed bumps nor Mombasa-bound commuters, who loiter in fidgety throngs at matatu stands, eyeing up the rare spaces inside the crowded vans that would mainly suit those with elfin waists, elastic shoulders and the ability to stand one-footed with arms extended in jetee for journeys of up to twenty miles.

  After Mariakani, the last of the traffic has disappeared and the sun has cleared the thick thorn bush on our right, re-energising the shrill screech of insect life that can be heard throbbing for miles all around the dense, impenetrable wall of scrub.

  We carry on at a canter to Voi, where we stop for a pre-planned coffee break and wait for Kiwi John to catch up. Stripping off our leathers, Little Stevie and I flop on the wicker chairs, while a flat-faced waiter takes our order.

  'Will you be happy to see Almas again, Stevie?' I ask.

  'Yes, Dad.'

  Nothing more; I'll have to probe.

  'It sounds from what Kiwi John was saying last night that Almas really does like you, you know. Maybe she would make a good girlfriend for you after all.'

  No response to this. Instead, Little Stevie keeps his eyes anywhere but on my own.

  'Wouldn't you want to try with Almas again, Stevie? You know, I don't think Yasmiin is ever going to be your girlfriend. I think she thinks of you more like a brother.'

  For a while, the silence continues. Then just as we spot Kiwi John's Land Cruiser swinging into the forecourt:

  'I know, Dad. It's you she wants to marry. Maybe you'll have more children with Yasmiin, Dad, and that will be bad because I will have to share you with new children and we won't have all our time together to do football betting and running.'

  The waiter returns with a tray containing a curious DIY coffee arrangement, consisting of separate thermos flasks of hot milk and water accompanied by a tin of Nescafe. And as we look up, we see that he has brought two of his mates with him and they're all grinning at us.

  'Mr Football Kenya and the Quiet Boy!' our waiter beams, laying out the plastic flasks and cups with the sort of ceremony you would expect if he were laying out the Wedgewood for a conservative fundraiser in Leamington Spa. 'It's an honour, Sirs. Please may we shake your hands?'

  Which we offer, getting up from our seats to do so, despite a queasy sensation that's welling up again in the pit of my stomach. Little Stevie absent-mindedly copies my actions, and when he's finished his handshakes we're joined by Kiwi John and Yasmiin, my old mate in his grubby, blue t-shirt that once said Harley Davidson somewhere across the chest before several litres of engine oil obviously leaked one day from the sump of one of his Sudanese lorries to silt up the distinctive logo in its slime. For Yasmiin, it's exactly the opposite: she's back to her smart, western businesswoman outfit, hair neatly pinned back and just a trace of makeup.

  The buzz of the morning ride I have just savoured, the stimulus of the coffee, the arrival of my dear, dear friends and the intensity of the love I feel for my boy, sitting right here next to me now while he flicks through old football scores in one of his dog-eared comfort books - all of this combines to fill me with a strength of emotion that leaves a glutinous glob at the back of my throat when I try to chat to Kiwi John and Yasmiin. Kiwi John mistakes this lumpiness for physical pain and gives me time to pull together before we lay our plans for the rest of this return trip, agreeing that Little Stevie and I will push on ahead after the half-way stop in Mtito Andei, the gateway to the Tsavo National Parks.

  Yasmiin squeezes Little Stevie's elbow and pats his shoulder, but then struggles to get more than a grunt from him, and her unaccustomed impotence makes me suddenly disturbed and desperate to be alone with Little Stevie, while around us the waiters have been joined by half a dozen other onlookers, all standing around, staring and pointing at us, an attention that I could do without, but which Kiwi John finds most amusing:

  'Hope I get a mention in the credits somewhere when they make the film of all this,' he chuckles.

  And no doubt, he will! But for me, it's a harsh wait and a strange sensation to be glad to see the back of Kiwi John and Yasmiin when coffee is finally done and we have shaken and reshaken all the waiters' hands all over again, plus lots of last-minute arrivals besides, and I finally manage to grab Little Stevie's arm just before we mount the Africa Twin.

  'Stevie, look at me,' I plead, and finally he does, sitting astride the saddle. 'All that business you said about me and Yasmiin before the coffee came, that will never happen you know.'

  'Promise, Dad?' he asks blandly.

  'Promise,' I swear, and that's all it takes, for my son has been brought up to trust a promise, and I have made it my business never to break one.

  But my voice is cracking up now and for once it's convenient that Little Stevie can't register the emotions concealed in intonation, for I was nearly minded to explain why Yasmiin and I will never be starting a rival family. Too early for all that just yet, however; it's a secret that can keep for now, at least until we're safe and secure back inside Kiwi John's Langata house.

  We have another wait for Kiwi John and Laila to catch up with us at Mtito Andei, but when we've rested there for another coffee and a few mandaazi buns, Little Stevie and I are free to fly again on the Africa Twin.

  I have so much else on my mind that I can hardly muster even a scowl when we streak past the gaping eyesore that nearly became the entrance to Safari City at the site of the old Hunter's Lodge.

  It's not yet midday when we climb the steep escarpment behind Hunter's Lodge. Here we lose the sun and enter the dull grey clouds that shroud the Nairobi plains for most of July and August.

  We are both shivering in this upland headwind, and the unfamiliar chill stirs spasms deep inside my guts. The thick bush, which had screened both sides of the road until the base of the escarpment, has now thinned out into an open savannah, which stretches out in a panorama of acacia thickets populated here and there by giraffe and zebra.

  Little Stevie's hand pats my shoulder every time these ruminants appear, but for me, the feeling of contentment such stunning views us
ed to bring is sadly missing, replaced by a numbing, vice-like grip on my viscera. The spasms in my guts rise and subside like the see-saw undulations of the road. I think Little Stevie must recognise the spot I showed him on the outward leg where my brother Steve was shot all those years ago, for I feel him wriggling on the saddle behind me - and if I were a betting man, I'd say he's got his got his eyes tightly scrunched up too!

  It's a real struggle for me now. My shoulders are throbbing with a rigor-quasi-mortis fatigue; at times I'm almost slumping over the handlebars when the pain in my guts intensifies. What's worse, the drop in speed brings further dangers in the form of a succession of Mercedes Benzes, which one by one gain enough speed to draw level and then overtake us; soon even a matatu too.

  The tyre-traps are down at the police checkpoint straddling the T-junction with the Machakos road, and with the tiredness moaning at me from every fibre of my body, that is almost a welcome relief. We approach the barrier at a crawl, and are waved to one side by a gun-toting policeman, who wanders over with two of his mates, looking more sullen and surly than is usual for Kenya's kleptomaniac upholders of the law:

  'Where are you going, bwana?' the thin-faced young constable asks, his rifle bobbing uncomfortably close to my chest.

  'Nairobi.'

  'Which part?'

  'Karen.'

  At this disclosure a fatter colleague waddles over, wrapped in a dark blue cape against the upland chill. The beads of sweat on his dark, pumpkin of a face look strangely out of place in this climate and must have more to do with fitness, or lack of it, than Fahrenheit.

  'Karen is OK,' he mutters like it has cost him effort - and it probably has, 'but you cannot go into town. There is big trouble in town today. All roads are closed.'

  'Thanks for telling us, mate, we'll do just that,' I tell him with fake joviality: if ever there was a time to leave in a hurry, this is it!

  Now a third policeman approaches and starts a conversation with the other two that doesn't bode well. I start to rev the Africa Twin ever louder and louder just to help them make their minds up, but it's the arrival of two matatus behind us that finally exerts a more serious pull on their combined attention, prompting the thin guy who first stopped us to poke the tyre traps apart with the barrel of his rifle and wave us through.

  But we're not out of it for long. Around Athi River there's a further succession of police checks, each one more imposing than the last. Ever bulkier ranks of policemen throng these barricades, morosely brandishing radios and rifles like all this standing around was never in the terms and conditions when they signed up for a career of state-sponsored highway pilfering. And at some checkpoints there are even soldiers from the dreaded GSU.

  The unfamiliar arrival of a large motorbike with two leather clad riders is usually enough to slip most Kenyan roadblocks. My trick of choice is to saunter up at a brisk, but unthreatening speed, then give the policemen a regal wave with my left hand, vanishing through the gap in the barrier before they have time to make their minds up.

  And for a while my usual luck is in. We slip through four tight cordons one after the other before we hit the mother-of-all roadblocks by the Nairobi airport turn-off. It's bristling with the red berets of GSU soldiers, and this time a metal barrier has fully closed the highway ahead. Groups of white- helmeted policemen, each accompanied by half a dozen GSU soldiers, patrol both sides of the tarmac, where a large collection of vehicles is being pulled apart faster than a clump of careless caterpillars that has fallen into a column of safari ants.

  We are waved to a halt by a couple of GSU men at a spot next to a matatu, where a row is ensuing between passengers and policemen. The GSU boys have circled it off, rifles levelled at the ready.

  'Driving licence and passport,' a tall GSU soldier snaps at me, gun trained directly at my chest.

  I cut the engine and remove my helmet. Little Stevie copies me and I know already that he's been spooked by a fear that something sinister and unwonted is in play:

  'Malmo 0, Gefle 0, Tromso 3, Stromsgodset 1,' I hear him mutter, and note that he's mixing scores between the Swedish and Norwegian leagues. Not a good sign.

  My next thought is for Kiwi John and Yasmiin, so I dig my mobile from the inside pocket of my leather jacket and am just putting the device to my ear when a searing blow strikes the side of my face, sending the phone smashing in pieces across the tarmac, while a trickle of blood courses down from a throbbing ear to leave its salty imprimatur at the corner of my mouth.

  'No telephones,' the GSU soldier shouts. His face is taut with rage and he spits the words out with proper globules of saliva, some of which strike against my cheeks.

  There are half a dozen GSU men round us now, their dark faces accentuating the whites of nervy eyes, rifles bobbing in jumpy hands.

  'Passports and driving licence,' the same voice demands again, almost civilly, but he's hardly finished before his voice is drowned out by an evil scream of eureka. We've been recognised:

  'Ndiyo ni yeye! Bwana Football Kenya na mtoto wake!' a tall soldier with silver-rimmed sunglasses shouts triumphantly.

  'Football Kenya! Football Kenya!' they all chorus together, but now for the first time since we started off in Magadi almost a year ago, the name is chanted in a howl of rage rather than a whelp of delight.

  Like baying hounds, the soldiers start to ensnare us in ever-decreasing circles, taunting, chanting and shouting 'Football Kenya!' Then a rifle butt prods first me in the ribs, and soon after, to my utter horror, I hear Little Stevie let out a started yelp as the same treatment is meted out to him.

  'Stevie!' I scream, diving straight at the thin wisp of a drainpipe soldier who has dared to assault my son, and finding enough feral strength in my rotting carcass to put two hands round the bugger's windpipe, I feel a surge of primeval satisfaction as I watch the whites of his eyes start to bulge.

  For a couple of seconds I can read real fear in this whippersnapper's eyes, but then the inevitable blows rain down on my head. The rifle butts knock me off for a second, but I'm back on my feet quicker than the policemen expect.

  'Steeeee veeeee, Steee veeee!' I shout out with a defiant roar, the blood lust filling my lungs, fists clenched tight and groping for the next assailant.

  But just as I least expect it, the blows have stopped. Gasping for breath, I look just beyond the ring of rifle butts and realize why. Behind them a fat officer is gesticulating something in sign language, the red stripes on his chest and arms swarming in important bands all over his uniform.

  I should be grateful for this bugger's intervention. After all, his raised baton has at least stopped the beating, but this wanker is so far up his own arse he doesn't even seem to notice me and Stevie, and I'm not sure we can hope for too much help from this fellow talking in a detached swagger into his walky-talky.

  But this is my chance to regroup. With red rivulets of blood snaking down from my scalp and into my eyes, I stagger towards Little Stevie and clasp him so tightly to my chest that the blood starts to flow in heavier spurts from my scalp, dripping steadily onto Little Stevie's leathers and boots, though he just stands there rigid and frozen, totally unresponsive to my touch.

  'Taurus, alpha Bootis,' I hear him mumbling, instinctively moving his feet away to dodge the splashes of blood, like they're falling from five-belly Frank who's picking the glass from his puke-stained face on a foul, frosty night in Falkirk and not from his dear old dad of near twenty years' loyal and exclusive care. This is bad. Real bad. Little Stevie has withdrawn into himself, withdrawn further than I've ever known before and simply stands next to me like I don't exist, swaying erratically to and fro with his hands pinning back his ears.

  'It's all right son, it's over now,' I reassure him pathetically, loosening my grip just a little from around his shoulders.

  'Mr Brian Wood?' I hear the officer behind me bark.

  I turn to face the voice and nod. The downward movement of my head again sends a further shower of blood spraying onto the
tarmac below, and for the first time I'm aware of stabs of pain darting pell-mell across my abdomen, where the rifle butts have worked on my shoulders and kidneys.

  The officer steps closer towards me, baton drooping in his left hand, while in his right he brandishes a scrap of paper.

  'I have a warrant for your arrest, Mr Wood. For you and your son, Mr Steven Wood.'

  'Oh? What for?' I ask almost casually, holding my head back to stem the flow of blood.

  'Tax evasion. You have been working in Kenya for many months now without a work permit. This is very serious.'

  'Rubbish,' I snort, spitting out the blood from my mouth in contempt. 'I haven't worked anywhere for years, mate. All my income comes from gambling, and that's classed as a leisure activity!'

  But I might as well have been talking old Scandinavian football scores or the declinations and right ascensions of the variable stars in Virgo for all the good that has done with this pompous GSU officer.

  'Do you have a valid work permit in your passport?' he insists.

  So we carry on with this futile conversation a little longer, while the crowd of GSU soldiers is fleshed out by the arrival of a considerable number of blue police uniforms. Little Stevie has slumped to the ground now and is sitting on the tarmac, hands clasped ever tighter around his ears, while the tone of his stale football score chanting grows ever shriller and elicits mocking laughter from some of the soldiers.

  The officer shakes his head at everything I say and I glance for a second heavenwards in that surreal, out-of-body frisson you get when you realize that the could-never-happen-to-me story which had only ever previously intruded into your world when you read about it on the crumpled cover of the tabloid paper that got discarded on the seat opposite you on the 6:03 from Wokingham has suddenly invaded and ransacked your reality.

  It's cool under these grey, featureless skies, and though the blood has started to congeal in my hair, the beating I have just taken has sparked a fresh riot in my guts, which elicits a thin, watery stripe of vomit from the corner of my mouth, where it must be hanging in a long film of afterbirth slime.

  So I slump down on the ground again next to Little Stevie, draping an arm around his shoulder, while the GSU officer continues his interminable walky-talky conversation and is soon joined in the centre of our ring by a blue-uniformed policeman of equally significant rank, judging by the plumage of red stripes sprouting from his chest pockets and epaulettes.

  With the arrival of the bigwigs, however, tension has eased just a little; the wolfish pack surrounding us has retreated and is no longer snarling. There are no guns directly levelled at us any more, and a dozen or so of the soldiers have turned round to confront a mob of passengers recently removed from a Nairobi-bound matatu, some of whom flash the FC Kenya sign at us through the gaps in the ranks, while a heated argument between passengers and police induces ripples of pushing and shoving, which spill over into the huddles of khaki-clad GSU.

  We stay this way for some time, Little Stevie keeping up a steady litany of star data while the pain in my stomach burns out of control, forcing me to lie down on the hard-baked earth next to him before the GSU officer roughly kicks the sole of my biking boots:

  'OK, Mr Wood. You will come with us now. These policemen are taking you to Nairobi Central.'

  The two constables he points to puff themselves up importantly at their commanding officer's bidding and step forward to haul first me, then Little Stevie to our feet.

  Under their scrutiny we are escorted past a long zigzag line of cars and buses all pulled up by the side of the road till we reach a blue police Land Rover.

  There are five occupants all dozing inside the vehicle and they look reproachfully at us as they are forced to lose their seats and consider the prospect of some work.

  'Inside,' one of the constables grunts.

  'What about our motorbike?' I ask, and this simple observation causes considerable debate, so much so that instructions on this issue have to be sought by walky-talky.

  'OK,' the constable snaps sullenly, like I've just forced him to concede a valuable point, 'you can ride your bike to Nairobi Central behind us. But your son must stay in the Land Rover with us.'

  'No way,' I bristle. 'I'm not being separated from my son for any reason.'

  But the ensuing argument is getting us nowhere and soon another group of gum-chewing GSU soldiers wanders towards us, attracted by the noise and by the Bribes Available Here signs written all over my white skin. Not a welcome sight.

  'All right, I'll follow on behind you,' I concede.

  If only I can get away from the GSU, I think I can find some wads of cash hefty enough to secure our release from any police station in Kenya. But in the meantime, it looks like I'm about to make one of the grimmest decisions I've ever faced.

  And doesn't it just feel that way. All too quickly the pain that's been engulfing every inch of my body is nothing compared to the tidal wave of despair that washes over me when the Land Rover door slams shut and I catch a glimpse of Little Stevie sandwiched between two blue uniforms, with his hands still tight around his ears and nothing but a few stale football scores to comfort him in his misery.

  Two policemen accompany me back to the bike. My guts are liquid lava, my head, shoulders and kidneys are so sore I can hardly swing myself onto the saddle, let alone kick-start the engine, but somehow I manage and it's an appropriately funereal pace the Land Rover sets as we are ushered through the barricades and tyre traps and we head down the Mombasa highway towards Nairobi town.

  The first smell of burning rubber reaches my nostrils soon after we've left the roadblock, and I wonder how Little Stevie will be coping with this stench inside the Land Rover, not to mention the inevitable BO of the two policemen squashed up beside him.

  Then, as the road curves to the right through the suburbs of South B and South C, we see the first mounds of burning rubber tyres, see hooded figures flitting here and there amid the buildings, chased either by policemen in riot gear or by pockets of more menacing GSU soldiers.

  In the distance, towards the centre of town, I can hear sporadic bursts of gunfire. Wild-faced policemen stop us at each of the roundabouts along Uhuru Highway and twists of tear gas make me retch anew each time we pass through, till I'm so sick of being sick that I am flopping over the handlebars when we arrive at Nairobi Central, just an ironic stone's throw from the Norfolk Hotel, where we last left Nairobi all those months ago.

  I never thought I'd be so glad for the chance of being locked up in a police station, but that's exactly what I feel as I pull the bike up at the front of this pock-marked mess of an HQ, surrounded by armed officers, who all look so shocked at the sight of the Africa Twin, they don't know whether to abuse or salute me.

  'Don't like this, Dad, don't like it all,' Little Stevie screeches when they open the Land Rover's door and at last I can throw my hands around his neck once again. But it's not just out of relief that I clasp him so tightly to my chest, for without Little Stevie's support I can no longer stand upright.

  Mercifully one of the policemen has carried in our rucksack from the back of the Land Rover. Under the reproachful scrutiny of half a dozen officers, I extricate our passports from a side pocket and surrender them to the officer in charge.

  'Retirement visa!' a gaunt police captain with a receding hairline and one bloodshot eye shouts triumphantly when he finds the right page. 'Retirement visa, Mr Wood! Where does it say you can work in Kenya?'

  'I've never worked anywhere for more than twenty years,' I groan. 'In Kenya or anywhere else. What I do with football matches is classed as a leisure activity.'

  'We will see,' the captain shrugs indifferently. 'Somebody big wants to interview you, Mr Wood. You must explain yourself to him, not me.'

  Right now I couldn't care less if I were facing extradition to the US on the FBI's most wanted list, so I'm almost relieved when we are searched and relieved of our valuables and taken off to the cells. At least there I can slump on the
floor.

  But when we reach the end of a long corridor and the policemen start to bundle Little Stevie into a tiny cell without me, my strength suddenly returns and I lunge at the dirty white bars, pounding them with my fists:

  'Don't you worry, Stevie boy. I'll have you out of here in no time. Trust me son, we'll soon be out.'

  But Little Stevie is not looking my way at all.

  'Don't like this, Dad, don't like it all,' he screams, shriller than ever, then falls to the bare, concrete floor and resumes a high-pitched wailing of assorted star data, that is all the more alarming for being an unrecognisable hotch-potch jumble of constellations.

  The sight of Little Stevie in such distress brings deep, heaving sobs to my chest, and the tears streaming down my cheeks mix in with the rubbery film of vomit hanging from my lips in a mucus mess that must defy all description.

  My own cell is further down the corridor and unlike Stevie's, it's packed with half a dozen wretched-looking Kenyans. But I've no eyes for them, sympathetic though they seem. All I can do with the trace of strength that's left inside me is to call out for Little Stevie one last time before collapsing to the ground, sinking first onto my knees and then stretched out on my stomach, finding just enough space amid the startled faces of my fellow prisoners to extend to my full length on the cold, concrete floor.

  Down here in the dirt and the dark, my beat up body just wants to give up on everything, give up on life itself, but there's one thing dearer than life and he's muttering shrilly to himself just a few yards away from me further down this corridor. For his sake I must find the energy to get out of here. For Little Stevie's sake, I'll do whatever it will take.